WND

Judge to hear alleged Islamic takeover of U.S. schools

District 'singles out Muslim students for special accommodations'

A federal court has scheduled a hearing in July on a case alleging Muslim activists have hijacked curriculum in San Diego’s public school district.

The case was brought by parents in the district who are suing over an “anti-Islamophobia” initiative in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed with district officials to combat “bullying.”

The Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, which is working with the parents, said U.S. District Court Judge Cynthia A. Bashant issued an order setting July 17 as the hearing date regarding its motion for a preliminary injunction.

“At the hearing, attorneys for both the families and the school district will present argument about whether the court should enjoin district officials from enforcing the initiative, which singles out Muslim students for special accommodations and empowers a controversial Islamic organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), to revise school curricula to depict Islam in a more ‘inclusive’ light,” the organization announced.

“The school district claims they rescinded the policy in July 2017, but thousands of pages of documents show district officials are still working with CAIR to implement a so-called ‘Islamophobia Toolkit’ for teachers. After the hearing, the court could rule on the motion before the beginning of the 2018-19 school year.”

Daniel Piedra, the fund’s executive director, said: “Preventing bullying and protecting our students is critically important, but public school policies must not discriminate in favor of one religion. San Diego Unified School District’s anti-Islamophobia initiative divides students along religious lines and allows a controversial sectarian syndicate unlimited access to impressionable children. Consequently, the initiative runs roughshod over bedrock First Amendment principles.”

To obtain the injunction, FCDF plans to show that its lawsuit is likely to succeed.

The school board said last July, amid the concerns of parents, that it canceled the initiative. But more than 2,000 pages of district emails disclosed during the litigation, FCDF said, show that school officials are still working with CAIR under the guise of an “Intercultural Relations Community Council.”

FCDF responded by filing a motion in February to shut down the initiative.

CAIR contends that the initiative’s purpose is not to favor Muslim students or force students to convert to Islam but to “educate and promote diversity.”

However, FCDF said, CAIR “spends twenty-five pages mischaracterizing Plaintiffs’ claims, concocting new ones, and altogether spurning long-held Establishment Clause jurisprudence as interpreted by the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, and about every other circuit.”

CAIR successfully lobbied the district’s superintendent and school board to adopt the program by providing surveys that it conducted showing a “plague of Muslim bullying” in San Diego schools.

However, the school district is mandated to report all incidents of bullying to California’s Department of Education, and it reported just two incidents of Muslim bullying in 2015 and 2016 out of 130,000 students. The district reported quadruple the number of anti-Semitic incidents.

The district paid thousands of dollars for CAIR’s recommended teaching materials, which were distributed to classrooms along with instructions for their use.

FCDF sought communications between CAIR agents and the school district “as well as documents tracing the Islamic organization’s strategic process for gaining inside access to impressionable schoolchildren.”

“CAIR’s national director testified that proselytizing to schoolchildren is a ‘religious obligation,’ and the purpose of CAIR’s educational outreach, which includes passing out religious propaganda to students during class, is to ‘create a religious educational environment,” the organization said.

In May 2017, in Groesbeck, Texas, a couple moved their sixth-grade daughter to a new school after they discovered her history homework assignment on Islam.

In late March 2017, as WND reported, a middle school in Chatham, New Jersey, was using a cartoon video to teach the Five Pillars of Islam to seventh-grade students, prompting two parents to obtain legal services to fight the school district, which has ignored their concerns.

WND also reported in March 2017 a high school in Frisco, Texas, set up an Islamic prayer room specifically for Muslim students to pray on campus during school hours. The same type of prayer rooms have been set up in high schools in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and other school districts.

In 2015, parents in Tennessee asked the governor, legislature and state education department to investigate pro-Islam bias in textbooks and other materials.

WND reported in 2012 ACT for America conducted an analysis of 38 textbooks used in the sixth through 12th grades in public schools and found that since the 1990s, discussions of Islam are taking up more and more pages, while the space devoted to Judaism and Christianity has simultaneously decreased.

In 2009, Gilbert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a group that reviews history books, told Fox News the texts were “whitewashing” Islamic extremism and key subjects such as jihad, Islamic law and the status of women.

Also in 2009, WND reported the middle school textbook “History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond,” published by Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, said an Islamic “jihad” is an effort by Muslims to convince “others to take up worthy causes, such as funding medical research.”

In 2006, WND reported a school in Oregon taught Islam by having students study and learn Muslim prayers and dress as Muslims.

WND reported in 2003 a prominent Muslim leader who eventually was convicted on terror-related charges helped write the “Religious Expression in Public Schools” guidelines issued by President Bill Clinton.